The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said
yesterday that 120 marks in Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination will be
the minimum marks required by candidates to get admission into any university.
The minimum cut-off marks for admission into polytechnics
and colleges of education was agreed to be 100 marks at the meeting while
innovative enterprise institutions had 110 as minimum admission marks.
JAMB Registrar Professor Is-haq Oloyede made the
announcement at the end of a policy meeting with authorities of higher
institutions in Abuja.
He said only 569,395 out of the 1.7 million candidates
that wrote this year’s UTME scored over 200 marks, adding that 23.8 per cent of
the total number of the candidates scored below 160 marks.
He said on no account should any higher institution offer
admissions to candidates who scored lower marks.
The meeting agreed that admission into first choice
universities should close on October 15 while December 15 was set as the
closure date for admission into second choice institutions.
Institutions would
have the liberty to choose from candidates who could not secure first choice
admissions, he said.
The registrar said candidates offered courses other than
their preferred choices may be given up to three days to accept or reject the
courses. Those who accept new courses given to them would be required to make
changes on JAMB website.
He said admissions would be given by institutions based
on agreed quotas prescribed by regulatory bodies including National
Universities Commission, National Commission for Colleges of Education and
National Board for Technical Education. Merit, catchment areas and educationally
disadvantaged states would be among the criteria.
He said: “What JAMB has done is to recommend. We will
only determine the minimum, whatever you (higher institutions) determine as
your admission cut-off mark is your decision.
“The senate and academic boards of universities should be
allowed to determine their cut-off marks.”
He said 17,160 students were admitted by higher
institutions but that some of them were regularized.
“Thirty per cent of those in higher institutions do not
take UTME or have less than the cut-off marks.
“The admission process is now automated with direct
involvement of the Registrar of JAMB for final approval.
“We have agreed to regularize admissions that were done
under the table this year. From next year we will not accept anything like
that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, said
government’s ban on examinations usually organized by universities for
admission seekers otherwise known as post-UTME last year was an error.
The minister said the government banned post-UTME because
the examination had become an avenue for corruption in some higher
institutions.
The minister asked higher institutions to conduct
aptitude tests for candidates seeking admission but mustn’t charge a fee of
over N2,000 per candidate.
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